


Magic Lessons

by transportive



Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League Dark (Comics)
Genre: F/M, bangs pots and pans together while yelling 'nicky has bpd'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transportive/pseuds/transportive
Summary: Five short connected pieces, written for the prompt 'five times taught' for Zatanna Zatara and Nick Necro.





	Magic Lessons

1

Nick fans the deck of cards in front of Zee. He puts on a suave grin and says, “Pick a card, any card.”

Zee’s laughing, but she complies. She obviously knows every trick in the book, already—her father probably taught them to her before she could walk—but she’s humouring Nick anyway. Acting like Nick will have some card trick she doesn’t already know (as if by magic).

Zee looks at her card, then hands it back to Nick. He shuffles it back into the card deck.

“Make sure you remember your card,” Nick cautions her. Zee rolls her eyes, but she’s still laughing and nodding, acting the captive audience.

Nick shuffles the deck three more times, very deliberately in front of Zee. Her card is hidden. Nick’s sure he could find it easily enough, either by misdirection or by actual magic, but that isn’t the goal here.

Impressing Zatanna is.

Nick taps the deck a few times, then pulls up a card. “Is this your card?”

Zee gives him a look. “No.”

“What about this one?”

“Still no.”

Nick hums thoughtfully, frowning slightly, as if this is perplexing him. Zee gives him a suspicious look. “Can you find it?” Nick asks, handing the deck off to Zee.

Zee rolls her eyes, but goes through the deck, card by card. “No,” she says after a long moment of searching. “It’s not here.”

Nick snaps his fingers, then leans forward. From behind Zee’s ear: the ace of spades.

“Was this your card?”

Zee’s laughing, but says, “Yeah, it was.”

Nick grins, Zee just shakes her head. “How about I teach you a better trick than that, Nicky?” she asks.

Nick leans forward to steal a kiss. “Gladly.”

2

Nick’s standing in front of their bathroom mirror, scowling at himself, when Zee passes him by. Zee has her first show at a big club tonight, one where the both of them might have an in into the magical community, and Nick’s probably more nervous than she is. It means they might be able to really get their foothold in New York, which they’ve needed. Their big break.

Zee, as a performer and as the mistress of magic. Nick, as something else.

He’s still figuring that part out.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Zee asks when she sees that Nick looks angry with his own reflection.

Looking up at her, Nick says, “My tie.”

Zee just looks amused. “Since when do you wear one?”

“Since tonight.”

Nick looks back at the mirror, tries to tie his tie again. He’s still not happy with it.

“Come here,” Zee says. She beckons him over, and Nick complies. As she’s undoing Nick’s bad knot and re-doing it with a much better one, she explains, “I used to help my dad get ready for his shows.”

Nick watches Zee for a moment, detecting the homesickness in her voice. He can’t relate, and so doesn’t try to, and instead remains quiet until Zee finishes the knot and pats it. “There,” she says.

Nick steps back and looks at himself in the mirror. It’s certainly better than he had been doing.

“I’ll show you how to do a better knot tonight,” Zee says, stepping up behind Nick, just to the side, and kissing his cheek.

Nick grins wickedly. “Is that a promise?”

Zee laughs and shoves him playfully.

3

“Nicky.”

Nick’s fuming, he’s furious, and his entire body is shaking. He doesn’t know what this is, and Zatanna’s voice doesn’t even quite register to him. It’s there, but it’s far away.

“Nick, look at me!”

Nick snaps his head up so fast it hurts, and he stares at Zee in shock. Why is she even speaking to him? He’s a fool, a fuck up, and he _failed_. She’s going to move on at any moment, she’s going to be done with him—

“Nicky,” Zee repeats again, stepping up to him where he’s frozen in place. She wraps her arms around him, holding him, and tucks her face into his chest. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest and knows she can surely hear it. “Nick, it’s okay.”

Nick’s mouth feels dry, but he finally says, “It’s not.”

“It _is_ ,” Zee insists, stepping back to look Nick in the eye. “You made one little mistake—”

“‘One little mistake?’” Nick repeats, eyes wide. He tears himself from Zee’s grip. He clenches and unclenches his hands before he brings them to his head and fists them in his own hair. “It was so much more than that!”

But Zee doesn’t rise to the bait. She just says, “No, it wasn’t. Nick, you have to learn to let these things go. I’m still here, Nick. We’re in this together.”

Somehow, the words break through to him. And though he’s not sure he agrees with her, Nick nods anyway.

He’d have to learn.

4

Lying in bed with Zee, Nick stares up at the ceiling as she sleeps. Her breathing is steady and even, and Nick feels a warmth he’s never felt before.

Growing up, he’d hated his family. He’d hated all of his so-called friends. Even the puppy his sister had been gifted for her eighth birthday, Nick had hated. He’d even thought about killing it, just so there was one less thing to take his parents’ love from him.

But it’s feeling Zee breathe deeply against his chest, and it’s thinking about card tricks, and knots, and even self-loathing, that Nick realizes he’s learned to love another living thing for the first time.

5

Nick thought many times of his future with Zee, and even with Zee and John together. At least, he thought of these things until he became obsessed with the Books of Magic.

But everything he does, he does for Zee, and for John. He loves them both. He wants to be powerful, he wants to provide and protect. He can’t stand the thought of being weak, and especially not being weak when he has two people he loves.

He’d been thinking about the future, about what the Books could do for them as a coven, when he walks out onto that rooftop.

For a moment, he considers saying nothing, of just leaving.

“Nick, I—”

“Save it, Zee. I don’t care.”

Nick learns what it means to be spurned. What it means to lose.

For all that Nick had learned from Zatanna, it’s this last lesson that is the hardest to swallow.


End file.
